It is strange to think I haven’t seen you since a month. I have seen the new moon, but not you. I have seen sunsets and sunrises, but nothing of your beautiful face. The pieces of my broken heart are so small that they can be passed through the eye of a needle. I miss you like the sun misses the flower. Like the sun misses the flower in the depths of winter. Instead of beauty to direct its light to, the heart hardens like the frozen world your absence has banished me to. I next compete in the city of Paris. I will find it empty and in the winter if you are not there. Hope guides me. It is what gets me through the day and especially the night. The hope that after you’re gone from my sight it will not be the last time I look upon you.

Life is a storm my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you: as Albert Mondego, the man!—Edmond Dantes, The Count of Monte Cristo